All posts tagged ‘cookbook’

The Science of Good Cooking by Cook’s Illustrated is built upon an interesting premise: The key to cooking is understanding some basic concepts — fifty of them, according to the experts at America’s Test Kitchen.

I’m not a cooking show watcher, so I had never heard of America’s Test Kitchen when I contacted them to ask if I could have a copy of their new cookbook to review. The reason I asked was because I have a teen who wants to go beyond the grounding I’ve given him (enough to survive on his own is my goal) and learn some new recipes and techniques.

The Science of Good Cooking met that criteria and then some. The book contains over 400 recipes, and they are the kind of dishes my non-adventurous family would actually eat: burgers, mac and cheese, chicken soup.

What the book adds to the classic American cuisine is seemingly endless experimentation to determine the best way to carry out each recipe. One evening I walked into the kitchen to find my son boiling a big pot of potatoes in water mixed with baking soda. The Home Fries that resulted were nice and tasty, but I had no idea what he was doing, until I read the recipe.

Each recipe in the book is followed by a section called “Why This Recipe Works.” Included are references to the concept involved — in this case, Concept 25: Potato Starches Can be Controlled. There are also explanations, with nice clear photos, of the experiments done to arrive at the best method for each recipe. The purpose of the baking soda, I learned, was to raise the pH of the water in order to break down the pectin molecules on the surface, creating an exterior that would become brown and a little mushy without overdrying the inside.

I took a turn with my son, comparing the Creamy Chocolate Pudding recipe to the quick no-frills version I made recently using another cookbook. The earlier try took only a couple of ingredients and a few minutes to prepare, but the end result, while acceptable, was almost gelled. I decided to spend a little more time and throw in a few more ingredients in the hopes of ending up with something smoother and silkier. The version in The Science of Good Cooking used cocoa and cornstarch like the no-frills kind, but added egg yolks, heavy cream, and bittersweet chocolate. (It also called for “instant espresso powder,” but the best I could find in my suburban supermarket was regular instant coffee.) The final product was indeed smoother and much richer, although not the perfection I was hoping for.

There are many things I like about this cookbook: It is incredibly thorough, and yet very clear and enjoyable to read. You could easily use it as the basis for a DIY cooking class. My son, if he decides to get serious about his cooking, could get a very good grounding by just sitting and reading the book from cover to cover. The number of articles just on potatoes, or just on chocolate, was astounding. And, as I said, the choice of recipes makes it likely that you’ll actually try more than a few. In fact, this is probably the perfect cookbook to send with your child off to college or a first apartment.

However, there were a few drawbacks for me as well. While it’s easy to find just one recipe here and there and try it out, as we did, finding all the information you need really demands reading the entire chapter. Since my son is not the methodical type, this resulted in some missteps as he skipped over an important point or two. (The worst being the watery chocolate frosting for the Valentine’s Day cake — apparently he’d never heard of a double boiler, and didn’t think to ask for a translation.)

The other downside for me is that the recipes are so exacting that any substitution can ruin the dish. This is not a “throw a little of this and that in” type of cooking. If you’re not a real stickler about following directions, the recipes can be a bit intimidating. They are also more complicated than I usually go for — the pizza dough my son tried, which came out wonderfully crispy, had to be started 24 hours in advance. Me, I’m just not that organized!

All in all, The Science of Good Cooking is clear, thorough, and filled with useful information. And if you’ve got the right spirit, you’ll have a great time working your way through its concepts, experiments, and recipes.

Bilbo’s pork pies, with mustard. One of the recipes from Heath Dill’s proposed Medium Rare and Back Again: A Tolkien Cookbook

We all know hobbits love their breakfast. And their second breakfast. And elevenses. And lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper. Shire grub seems largely inspired by traditional British items like scones and jam, sausages, mushrooms, whipped cream and berries, seed cakes, bread, cheese, fruits, and of course ale — food that Tolkien himself loved to eat.

Then there’s more esoteric fare from other corners of Tolkien’s world, like lembas, an elvish “waybread” much like cowboy hardtack. A few nibbles of lembas and an elf, dwarf or Númenórean could be sustained for days on the tough road to his or her next quest.

But how, exactly, might you make all that Middle-earth food here on regular-earth?

O’Reilly Media is arguably one of the best friends a geek can have. They are legendary for their wide array of programming books and system administration books. From the Nutshell Books, The Animal Books and the Hack Series, O’Reilly Media has been providing people with knowledge and support for over 25 years. It should come as no surprise that as the hardware hacking movement took off O’Reilly was there to help. I was recently sent a copy of The Arduino Cookbook 2nd Edition by Michael Margolis to review for GeekDad.

For those of you not familiar with the O’reilly Cookbook series, they are a collection of “recipes” that help you get things done with different technologies. I have used The Cisco IOS Cookbook in my professional work for years. The Arduino Cookbook 2nd Edition is a collection of recipes to get the Arduino Micro-controller board to do … well, what do you want it do?

The book follows a simple format to present the material to the reader. A problem is stated and a solution is given. After the solution the author follows with a discussion and sometimes a section for further reading. This format is used in all of the Cookbook Series books. The first problem facing an Arduino beginner is, how do I program this thing? The first recipe in the book addresses that question. Margolis walks the reader through setting up the programming environment, powering up the board and writing a script to blink an LED. The first chapter is slanted towards the Official Arduino boards and not the third party variations, like the Boardino or the Ardweeny. The code will work on any board based on the Arduino but you may need to hook up an LED to port 13 to run the test code; see Recipe 7.1 for how to do that.

When I was a kid, I brought my lunch to school every day, usually in a reusable lunch bag. Each morning, my mom would lovingly pack a healthy meal for me that fit a formula. Sandwich (meat or peanut butter and jelly) + fruit or vegetable (usually an apple half) + two homemade cookies. I then picked up my container of milk at school. I am one of the fortunate few: School food has never touched my lips. In fact, I was almost 13 before I even went to a school that even served food.

Today school food (for kids) and quick restaurant meals (for adults) are a far-too-common easy answer to the question of what to eat for lunch. For the most part, you don’t always know the ingredients that go into the food or how fresh it is, and it costs more than bringing something from home. But if brown bagging it just isn’t your (or your kids’) thing, why not try bento boxes?

The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches To Go is a good introduction to the method of creating healthy and fun meals stuffed in a little box. The book starts out with some rules for making a bento meal, tips for planning ahead, instructions on how to pack a bento, and plenty of safety tips. Since bento meals are made ahead of time and brought with you somewhere, they are usually eaten chilled, though there is nothing stopping you from assembling a hot bento and then eating it right away.

The back of the book describes the hardware and tools you may want to use to create your bento boxes. Bento boxes are usually stainless steel or plastic (though wood and insulated boxes are also options), and they can be cute or ordinary. Some are sectioned, while some are completely open to allow for inserts to divide or organize food. Some of the plastic ones claim to be microwave safe, but I’d prefer to use stainless steel and keep it to chilled meals. For those frugally minded, however, you don’t need a special purpose container to prepare meals in this way. A properly-sized Pyrex dish, Rubbermaid container, or other small food vessel with a lid will work just as well.

The back matter also contains a glossary of Japanese ingredients, a special section of recipes for bento staples, and information on making a weekly meal planner for your bento meals. The author’s website has other recipes, tips, and the printable planners.

Photo: Kodansha America, LLC

The middle of the book, by far the largest section, contains the recipes for both Japanese-style and non-Japanese-style bento meals. Many of the over 150 recipes have some sort of meat or fish in them, but vegetarian and vegan main dish recipes are also included, as well as plenty of vegetable side dishes. Some of the recipes include fancy or adorably cut vegetables, such as fancy-cut radishes and flower-shaped carrots, and visually appealing arrangements, but this kind of detail isn’t necessary if you don’t have the time or the inclination. Diced apples, cherry tomatoes, or orange sections work just as well. While bento boxes can be about presentation, they are also about taking care with your food and eating balanced meals.

That being said, once you start making bento boxes, you’ll probably see new possibilities all over the grocery store. Little foods, and foods that can be made little, may inspire new arrangements.

The book goes into a lot of detail on how to prepare and plan the meals. Much work is done ahead of time, but the overall amount of time to prepare one of these lunches seems impractical to me. But what you create doesn’t need to be fancy with special cutters, and/or you could prepare ingredients for several days’ worth of lunches at once. So in practice this may take much less time than the book describes. In any case, it has given me some great ideas for ways to make lunch fun for my kids, and to help with portion sizes and food variety.

For those trying to decrease their caloric intake, eating a thoughtfully packed bento box can also help with portion control. Pack plenty of fruits and vegetables, and lean protein, to keep the overall calorie count low. If you put a bento box together with color and variety in mind, you will end up with a balanced, properly-sized meal. Since bento boxes come in a variety of shapes and sizes, find the one that best fits your caloric intake needs.

The Just Bento Cookbook has inspired me to attempt some creative lunch packing in the future. However, without my kids going off to school each day, it will be more for fun and novelty than for any practical use.

The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches to Go retails for $19.95, but is much cheaper at Amazon, where there are also sample recipes. This book will inspire you. It may inspire you to create beautiful creations that you eat yourself or serve to your children. Or it might inspire you to eat more balanced meals. Or perhaps to go for quality over quantity. But if you’ve never tried making bento boxes before and want to give it a try, this book is an excellent place to start.

As a mom and a wife, I have always felt that one of the most useful things I could ever impart to my sons and any of their future co-inhabitants is the ability to cook and clean. (Whether they develop the desire to do those things may be beyond my ability, but at least they will never be able to complain they don’t know how.)

So this year, along with our other homeschool subjects, we’ve been doing a unit on food. It’s taken a little more effort than I expected, mostly because I haven’t yet found a good book or other resource that presents all the information I’d like to convey. There are cookbooks for beginners, but they aren’t particularly aimed at teenage boys. Books like Cooking for Geeks have stirred their interest in making the kitchen into a lab, but it’s not the best guide for dishes like mom used to make.

What my kids need is a book that combines food safety, nutrition, cooking techniques, meal planning, shopping, and budgeting tips with recipes that appeal to their limited palate. It would be nice if it also told them how to make a full meal from start to finish, including before-cooking prep and clean-up afterward.

Which is all a way of admitting I had high expectations when I requested a review copy of the book Teen Cuisine by Matthew Locricchio. Locricchio is a professional chef and instructor and the author of The International Cookbook for Kids (which I have not seen), so teaching kids to cook is not new to him. And Teen Cuisine scores on many counts, even if it’s not everything I dreamed of. Continue Reading “Review: Teen Cuisine Has the Recipes, But Not All the Rules” »

Everyone in our family has an allergy or food sensitivity of some sort, and we’ve always looked at ways to limit our exposure to the things that irritate us. I was more than happy to take Agate Publishing up on their offer for a review copy of “The Food Allergy Mama’s Baking Book“.

In addition to targeting some of the more popular allergies, dairy, eggs and nuts, this cookbook would also fit well in a vegan kitchen. All of the recipes that I read used dairy free margarine and nothing else that would normally be made with animal products.

I gave my daughter the choice on what she wanted to make and she quickly found the Classic Chocolate Birthday Cake with a Chocolate Butter Cream frosting. After a quick trip to the store to pick up some cake flour and dairy free margarine we set out to follow the recipe.